


Enter Sandman

by myrmidryad



Series: RIP Roswell [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Magic, Cults, Family Feels, M/M, Memory Loss, Memory Magic, Sex Pollen, Sibling Bonding, Truth Spells, it's very memory related what can I say, memory recovery, secret reveal, sort of but not quite but close enough that I figure it's worth the tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/pseuds/myrmidryad
Summary: Max, Isobel, and Michael have no memories from before they were found in the desert as mute children. After Noah dies revealing they all came from the same coven cult, the siblings decide to cast a spell together to try and access those lost memories.
Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Past Isobel Evans/Noah Bracken - Relationship
Series: RIP Roswell [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990846
Comments: 24
Kudos: 45





	1. Isobel

**Author's Note:**

> Second [RIP Roswell](https://riproswell.tumblr.com/post/627177290151903232/rest-in-peace-roswell-a-halloween-rnm-event) fic, the prompt was sleep with one eye open and the themes were dreams/nightmares, magic, psychics, and alternative realities, and I managed to hit basically all of those without even meaning to.
> 
> Title from [Enter Sandman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD-E-LDc384) by Metallica, which was also the title of the day because some part of my brain clearly wanted a bingo for day 2.

Michael’s truck was already outside Max’s house when Isobel pulled up, the bag on her passenger seat jingling ominously as the bottles inside clinked against each other. There wasn’t time to pause and gather her thoughts – they would’ve seen her headlights, and she didn’t want them to think she was hesitating.

She wasn’t hesitating. 

The bag jingled again as she slung the strap over her shoulder and cradled the contents carefully as she got out of the car. She’d paid good money for this wine, and she wasn’t going to drop it now.

“You’re early,” she said to Michael as she let herself in. He was sat at the kitchen bar, Max behind his desk on his laptop.

“So’re you.” He tilted his head in Max’s direction. “Professor Smarts here is still marking, obviously.”

“Shut up,” Max murmured, distracted. “I’ll be done faster if you don’t bother me.”

“We’re starting in twenty minutes whether you’re done or not,” Isobel warned. She’d thought being a teacher had looked boring when she’d been in school, so of course it tracked that Max would go and become one as soon as he could after graduating. They were only twenty-eight, but Max had behaved like an old man their whole lives.

“You get the goods?” Michael asked, and Isobel drew the wine out of her bag and passed it over to him. 

“That is the most expensive alcohol I’ve ever bought, and that’s seriously saying something. She’d better be as good as you say she is, Michael.”

“Have I ever led you wrong on magic before?” Michael asked pointedly. “Relax. Maria and Rosa are professionals.”

“Only in the sense that I had to pay through the nose for that,” Isobel said sharply. She’d never liked either girl in high school, and that hadn’t changed since.

Although, she’d only learned a few months ago that she’d been under Noah’s mental thumb for the past eight years, so maybe without him, things might have been different. She was confronting a lot of her own assumptions about herself these days, which was uncomfortable as hell, and made her even more irritable than usual.

Michael rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a prude. Maria’s got more spice than anyone else in Roswell, and Rosa’s only second to her.”

Isobel sneered. “She’s not such a big deal caster that she doesn’t spend all her time fleecing her customers.”

“You don’t know her, Isobel.” 

“And you do?”

“Better than you do.”

“Guys.” Max turned to look at them, glaring. “Either shut up, or go outside. I’m almost done.”

Michael raised his eyebrows at Isobel and tipped his head in the direction of the front door. Isobel hadn’t taken her coat off yet, so she was fine to go back outside, and did so without another word. Michael followed a moment later, settling his hat on his head as he closed the door behind him.

The patio furniture had been cleared to one side, and Isobel stood to the left of the door, out from under the porch roof. The April sky was devastatingly clear, the full moon glowing like a small sun above them. Isobel’s breath came out as a plume of condensation, and so did Michael’s. Neither of them said anything, and Isobel looked up at the moon and tried not to feel like they were just wasting their time and money.

Before Noah, they’d always ignored their abilities. Plenty of people had a knack for magic, that wasn’t unusual, but no one in the world had powers like the three of them did. They didn’t just have the touch, or some spice, or a spark. No normal practitioner could heal like Max, or move things without touching them like Michael, or get into other people’s heads like Isobel. That sort of power was way beyond the normal range of gifts, even of people like Maria DeLuca and Rosa Ortecho.

Isobel had always known, in a hazy, undefined sort of way, that their abilities probably had something to do with their early childhoods. But the three of them had no memories before being found wandering along the road as mute, naked children, and she’d been perfectly happy avoiding whatever trauma she was sure lurked in the back of her mind. So had Max.

Michael was the one who’d taken a somewhat different track. He hadn’t had them to lean on until he was relocated back to Roswell at eleven, and while he’d kept the secret willingly, he hadn’t been content to ignore his powers the way Isobel and Max were. Neither of them had ever tried to expand their gifts or practice any other kind of witchcraft, not so much as a luck spell or a love potion.

Turned out Michael hadn’t been so idle.

“You’re sure this will work?” Isobel murmured, still looking up at the moon.

“No.” Michael shrugged when she glared at him. “Look, I’ve tried about every memory spell I can find on myself, and nothing’s worked yet. This might not either. But it’s worth a shot.”

They couldn’t allow themselves to be caught out again, after all. Noah had said, before he’d died, that their coven would never let them go. They’d always looked for them, and they would look for them forever. It was only a matter of time; Noah had been sure of it. He’d died sure of it, as some spell he’d been put under twisted his heart inside his chest, against everything Max had been able to do.

Isobel still had no idea how to think of him. He’d latched onto her life like a parasite, riding along with them in secret without giving up any information at all until a chance truth-revealing spell of Michael’s had brought everything to light. And then he’d been so scared. Furious and panicky with it, nothing like the man she’d known, screaming and murderous, trying to kill Michael for ruining his deception, struck down by whatever spell had been placed around his heart before he could complete the act.

Max had healed Michael’s neck, where Noah had stabbed him with a fork. There wasn’t even a scar.

“How many memory spells have you cast?” Isobel asked, and Michael let out a great sigh, his breath steaming away from him in a curling cloud.

“Dozens. I got records of ‘em all in my bunker if you’re that interested, but none of ‘em worked, so I don’t know how much use it’d be.”

Most witches learned together, under family or other tutelage. Covens were normal, as were family groups and working pairs like Maria and Rosa. People weren’t meant to make magic alone, but Michael had been forced to. Isobel kept going back and forth with herself on whether she was more upset that he’d been so isolated, or whether she was more angry that he’d never told her and Max about it.

“But you think all of us doing it together will help?”

“Can’t hurt.” Michael sighed again. “I just wanna know who we are. Is that so crazy?”

“No. But it’s not crazy to not want to know either.” Isobel twisted her hands in her pockets. “I know you like living life on the edge of society, but I don’t. I don’t want my life to get any more ruined than it currently is.”

“The edge of society?” Michael raised his eyebrows. “What, because I live in a trailer?”

“Because you…you have all these little jobs, and you’ve never settled down, and you stay off-grid like some conspiracy theorist.”

“Okay, first of all, I do not stay off-grid like some conspiracy theorist. I have a phone, don’t I?”

“When you remember to use it.”

Michael waved that away. “Second, I like having fingers in lots of pies – you learn more that way. It’s research, Isobel. I learned more about desert magic and ranch witching in one month of working for Foster than I’d ever have gotten from a book. And thirdly, what does settled down even mean?”

“It means a permanent address, for a start.” That, at least, was an old argument. She hated Michael’s Airstream with a passion.

“And?” Michael gave her an ugly little smile. “A partner, right? Kids, white picket fence, a day job? I’m good, thanks. You can get plenty of that from Max.”

“Max doesn’t have most of those things.”

“Yeah, not for lack of trying.”

Isobel couldn’t deny that. Max and Liz Ortecho had gotten together just as they’d graduated, and he’d followed her across the country on a whirlwind romance roadtrip before she’d started college. They’d managed the long-distance thing for a bit, but it hadn’t lasted. They’d struck it back up a few years later, and it had all blown out again. Isobel knew her idiot brother, and she knew Liz was it for Max. Either they’d work it out or Max would be alone forever.

“I just want you to be happy,” she said, and gave Michael a sharp sideways look. “And don’t try and tell me that you are. Frankly, I’ve got trust issues with you right now, so I won’t believe you whatever you say.”

Michael’s lips twisted in a reluctant smile, and he looked up at the sky, shoulders hunched against the cold. “I never wanted to lie to you, you know.”

“You still did though.”

They stayed outside a minute more before Isobel decided that Max had had long enough, and they were casting this spell whether he was ready or not.

Michael got the fire going and Isobel helped Max move the food and wine outside, readying the offerings that Michael had insisted were necessary even as Max had muttered about attracting wildlife by putting food down outdoors after dark. They were clumsy around each other, stopping and starting and moving uncertainly, neither of them sure what they were doing while Michael was fluid and certain.

He’d probably been doing complex ritual castings since he was in high school, Isobel thought, a little unkindly. It still felt like there was some part of the puzzle she was missing when it came to Michael, and it kept nagging at her. The way he’d gotten his degree at UNM and then come straight back to Roswell, the way he schlepped around in shitty, low-paying jobs when he could have been doing so much better.

When Michael went inside to get his notebook, Max touched Isobel’s arm. “We don’t have to do this,” he murmured. “Not if you don’t want to.”

Max still thought their anonymity was their best defence. It had worked for a long time, but Isobel was sick of burying her head in the sand – or more realistically, having her head forced down without her consent. “No.” She straightened and looked Max in the eye, freshly resolved. “We’re doing this.”

Max nodded. “Alright.”

Michael came back out, grinning a little. “You guys ready?”

“Yep.” Max squared his shoulders, and Michael laughed.

“Relax, man. It’s a spell, not a fight.”

Since having to confess his years of magical practicing and experimenting, Michael had explained a little bit about the theory, which was the bit he apparently found the most interesting about magic. So Isobel knew everything he directed them to do had a purpose, but she still felt kind of silly drawing symbols in the dirt with her fingertips and carefully tipping a cup so Max could drink wine out of it and walking around the fire one way and then the other. 

But when they linked hands and did it, slow at first and then faster, almost jogging in a steady circle anticlockwise around Max’s fire pit, Isobel could feel something. Buzzing under her skin, especially in her palms where she was holding onto Max and Michael. A weird, drunk feeling that would’ve been frightening if she couldn’t feel her brothers right there with her.

Isobel was always aware of Max. A warm, constant presence in her mind, always steady, always within reach. Impulsively, she reached out for Michael as well. She’d gone into his mind a few times over the years, mainly when they were kids and she was hassling him to give her the answers for questions in exams, but she’d never had the same connection with him as she had with Max. In the past, she’d gone into his mind. Now, it was like her mind split a little. She didn’t go into either of their minds – they were both rooted in the actions of their bodies as they continued to circle the fire – but Michael was there.

He stumbled, and Isobel _felt_ his shock. She and Max kept him running, their grips on his hands pulling him on, and Michael gasped. “Iz?”

“We’ve got you,” Max said, wondering. “Hey, I can feel you too!”

“Yeah.” Michael still sounded pretty shocked, and he squeezed Isobel’s hand. “Slow it down a little, follow me. You feel anything?”

“Buzzing,” Isobel said at once, as Max said, “It’s like there’s a hum under my skin.”

Michael practically beamed, the expression so unfamiliar that Isobel’s heart hurt a little to see it. “You’ve got it!” he said. “Hold onto that, okay?”

He slowed them down until they were walking, and then standing, and then got them to sit and let go of each other, pressing their palms to the dirt. “Let all that energy you just built up go,” Michael told them. “Let it out through your hands, like water.”

Isobel felt Max expel his power in a blast of energy that actually shook the ground, and she giggled. “Smooth.”

“Okay, when I said like water, I meant more like a faucet, not a tsunami,” Michel grinned. Isobel felt him release his energy too, in a smooth, steady exhalation into the ground that disappeared almost immediately.

When she tried, it was somewhere between the extremes. Not quite a Max-level explosion, but certainly not a controlled release either.

“That’s good,” Michael said, only humouring them a little bit. “Let’s go again.”

“That wasn’t it?” Max frowned.

“Definitely not, dude.” Michael got to his feet and beckoned for them to both do the same. “Raising and grounding is like the most basic of basics. We’re not going anywhere near our memories till you can do that without wrecking the foundations of your house. Plus, we need to be a little drunker for this before we actually cast this spell, so let’s have another round of the DeLuca-Ortecho special.”

Isobel held the cup for Michael this time, and Max held the cup for her as she drank. It was easier this time to feel the rise of the power, thrumming out from somewhere in her body, and easier to release it into the earth now she knew what to do. They did it three more times before Michael was satisfied, and Isobel was pleasantly buzzed from what probably came to maybe a glass and a bit of wine, total.

Max swayed after their fifth grounding, staring up at the sky in amazement. “Whoa. Guys, look at the stars right now.”

“You sound high,” Isobel told him, but looked up obligingly. “Those…sure are stars, Max.”

“No, there’s like…I don’t know how to describe it, there’s like lines between them.”

“Are you seeing star signs?” Isobel snorted. “What the hell was in that wine?”

“Enchantments.” Michael leaned back on his good hand and grinned. “There’s a reason DeLuca charges a premium on that stuff, y’know. It’s powerful. If Max is seeing star lines, that means it’s working.”

Isobel frowned. “Should I be seeing star lines? Ugh, I feel dumb just saying that.”

“Not necessarily. Look around at other stuff – is anything standing out? Anything look weird?”

The sky looked completely normal to her, but when Isobel looked around the lights inside Max’s house looked refracted and bigger than normal, like she was half in and half out of her mindscape. She grabbed at Michael’s arm instinctively, eyes wide. “This is so cool!”

“I know.” Michael grinned. “What’re you seeing?”

“The lights inside, they’re all glowy. And…there’s this like, shimmer?” She started being able to see it better as she spoke, blinking and looking around. “It’s pretty.”

“It’s probably energy.” Michael smiled. “You seeing it clustered round anything in particular?”

“Us,” Max said, and they both looked over at him. He was smiling too, small and still kind of amazed. “It’s all around us, and between us.”

Michael grinned at him. “Yeah.”

“This is incredibly trippy,” Isobel muttered, looking back and forth between them. “Are you sure Maria doesn’t put like, acid in the wine?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Michael rolled his eyes and stood up. “Come on, grab my hands again.”

“We’re doing it now?” Max asked.

“Yeah, we’re doing it now. Or, y’know, we’re trying it.”

Michael’s hand in Isobel’s felt bright, which made no sense, but she saw Max giving the hand of Michael’s he was holding a surprised look and knew he was feeling it too. She reached around to take Max’s other hand and sucked in a quick breath as a rush went through her like a gust of wind, her hands tightening around Max and Michael’s without meaning to.

“Relax,” Michael told them. “It’s like closing a circuit. No big deal.”

“Feels kinda big,” Max said, blinking at the fire, and Michael shrugged. 

“You’ll get used to it.”

Isobel eased her grip on Michael, but not on Max. Michael had let Max heal his hand in slow, small increments over the years since he’d broken it, but she was still wary of hurting him by accident.

“Feel it?” Michael murmured. “I think it’ll work best if we look at the fire.”

“I’m already looking,” Max said, and Isobel hummed a quiet agreement. The flames were sort of hypnotising, aggressively bright in the darkness. Beautiful like shimmering, there-and-gone-again scraps of fabric.

“Don’t freak out,” Michael warned them, as the world beyond the flames began to shiver, almost vibrating. “I’ve done this a hundred times.”

“Is it the wine?” Max asked nervously. “Can we look?”

“You can look,” Michael smiled, but he didn’t lift his head. “It’s part down to the wine, part the energy raising, part just us. No need to complicate things, just accept ‘em for what they are.”

Isobel snorted. “That’s so not your style.”

Michael grinned. “Yeah, but it’s easier for beginners, and you two are babies.”

If she hadn’t been holding his hand, Isobel would’ve smacked his shoulder. “Rude,” she huffed instead, and Michael laughed. The sound echoed a little, and Isobel held onto him and Max tighter without meaning to. “You just echoed. Is that normal?”

“Yeah.” Michael squeezed her hand. “Relax, Iz. Human senses are ridiculously easy to trick and manipulate. Unless something feels bad, it’s fine. And if something feels bad, just tell me, okay?”

“Okay,” Isobel said uncertainly.

“Relax,” Michael said, murmuring again. “Just let it all wash through you.”

It all sounded suspiciously yoga-y, like the sort of hippy-dippy woman power classes and workshops her mom had tried to drag her to after Noah died. Isobel had always thought that stuff was crap, the sort of magic-adjacent bullshit that made her scoff in disgust. It had always seemed so pathetic to her. But Michael was about as far from hippy-dippy as it was possible to get, and if her scientifically-minded brother could get into this witchcraft crap, it was at least worth a shot.

The world beyond the fire was wobbling like she was underwater now, so that was something at least. And the sound was weird too. The fire was still distinct, crackling and popping away, but there were odd sounds coming out of the darkness. Not threatening ones, nothing that hinted of movement. More like hums, almost like insect noises but not quite. Like the sound of cicadas if cicadas had wings made of tiny metal chimes. 

Isobel almost rolled her eyes at herself just thinking that, but it was what it sounded like. Hums and whistles and chimes, soft and distant, then closer. And very suddenly, it was daylight, but not. Isobel let out a gasp of shock at the same time Max did, and Michael looked around with interest. It was like two overlaying visions of the same scene – the reality of the darkness, and the strange not-there daylight.

“Is this normal?” Max asked, looking around.

Michael shrugged. “Sure. For a given value of normal. Look, people see all sorts of trippy shit when they’re having visions like this, don’t worry about it.” He rolled his shoulders and let go of their hands, turning around to face the desert. “Something visual like this usually means something we’re supposed to _see._ ”

The desert was different. Isobel moved past Michael to stand between him and Max, taking Max’s hand again. She wasn’t too proud to seek a little reassurance from her twin. The sun was painfully bright and getting brighter, glaring over the sand, which was just _wrong._ They were in New Mexico, but this desert was like something out of a storybook, or nature documentaries about the Sahara.

Suddenly and not suddenly at all, like she’d watched him walk from the horizon and only just noticed him standing there, Noah was in front of her. 

He was wearing that sweater she’d always pretended to hate to make him laugh. His expression was peaceful, his hair perfectly coiffed. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been writhing on the ground, choking in pain while Max tried helplessly to heal him. Her whole body was frozen under a wave of unexpected grief, so sharp it brought a lump to her throat that stopped her from even breathing.

Max gasped, and Michael took half a step back to be level with them even as Max lurched forward. “Liz?”

“What?” Isobel wrenched her gaze away from Noah in confusion, her heart aching. 

“It isn’t real,” Michael said, and cleared his throat. “Whoever you’re seeing, they’re not really there.”

Isobel looked back at Noah, who gazed placidly into her eyes, like he was on the edge of smiling. She had to swallow before she could speak. “I see Noah.”

“I see Liz.” Max squeezed her hand, and Isobel felt him look at her, and could feel his sympathy in the air between them and through their connection in her mind. Sympathy and a current of fury below it. Max hurt for her, but he could never forgive Noah for what he’d done.

Isobel breathed through her grief. “Who do you see, Michael?”

“No one you know.” Michael sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“This isn’t part of the spell?” Max asked.

“Kinda? But this isn’t what we came here for.”

“You say that like this is a physical space,” Max said slowly. “But it’s just in our minds, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Isobel saw Michael roll his shoulders out of the corner of her eye. “Doesn’t look like a mindscape to me. Isobel? You’re the expert.”

Isobel closed her eyes to force herself to stop staring at her dead husband. “It’s not my mindscape. Or either of yours. Or…I don’t know.” She frowned and looked around, trying to avoid looking at Noah again. “It doesn’t feel like any mind I’ve ever been in. But it’s not reality either. It’s like a weird in-between.”

“Or something else entirely.” Michael shrugged. “Liminal space. Kinda like where we were sitting – between Max’s house and the desert. Civilisation and wilderness. Told you, this stuff’s all about symbolism.” He turned away from Noah – or whoever the figure was for him – and back to the fire. “Come on, we’ve got a spell to cast.”

The fire pit was gone, but the fire was still there. As if she was dreaming, Isobel didn’t find it strange at all, though Max did. “It’s not hot anymore,” he muttered, leaning close to the flames floating about a foot off the ground with no visible fuel source. “What the hell?”

Michael wiggled his fingers, smirking. “Magic. Sit down, let’s do this.”

They sat around the fire and linked hands again, and this was the bit they’d all actually worked on together. Michael had promised them he’d get them to a place of power to cast the spell, but they’d decided on the formula (as Michael called it) between them. Max had come up with the words, and Isobel had decided on the mental gestures that would anchor them.

Michael said the best spells were simple when broken down to their bare essentials, with conditions built up afterwards. They’d broken their spell down to one single desire – to remember the truth. Isobel felt a little like a fool at first as they chanted _remember the truth_ over and over until their voices slipped out of synch and the words turned into a river of sound, but the odd semi-regular rhythm of it sank into her body and mind.

She could feel both her brothers, their presences in her mind growing stronger the longer they went on, driving their power up and up. Michael was swaying a little, which he’d told them could happen and shouldn’t be resisted, and feeling him so close in her mind felt so steadying that Isobel began to mimic his movements, and like he was magnetised Max followed suit.

They’d decided to focus on their first shared memory while they did this, all of them concentrating on the distant memory of the road in the dark, holding each other’s hands, the three of them together before they’d been pulled apart. Isobel could smell the dark, could feel the cold air on her naked body, the child’s body she’d grown out of. A memory she’d barely known, growing more and more vivid in her mind’s eye as they chanted on, channelling power through the closed connection of their bodies and linked hands.

Michael guided them, adjusting his chanting to bring Isobel and Max both back into synch with him and each other. The ghostly fire pulsed with their words, and there was a rush of energy that blazed through Isobel’s whole body as it dissipated. All of them stopped chanting, breath stolen, and Isobel was the first to make a sound. She laughed in pure exhilaration, grinning at Max and Michael. “Holy shit!”

They both laughed too, and the odd daylight faded around them, the real fire pit with its real fire (now dying) coming back into view between them. “Wow,” Max breathed, and leaned sideways till he fell into Michael, who wrapped an arm around his shoulders and snickered, then shouted with laughter as Max’s weight tipped him off-balance and he toppled onto his back. Isobel shuffled over to lie on top of Max, crushing both of them and giggling helplessly.

“Holy shit,” she said again. “I could run a marathon right now, what the hell?”

“Adrenaline buzz,” Michael grinned. “Cool, huh? Oof, guys, get off me, you’re heavy!”

“Rude,” Isobel giggled, rocking herself away from them and then springing to her feet, reaching down to pull Max up after her, and then Michael too. “That was awesome!” Michael looked so pleased that she had to hug him, and Max hugged them both too, Michael squeezed between them. “You definitely should’ve told us about this before!” she said into his curls. “It’s so fun!”

“You are so high right now,” Michael snorted. “Come on, we gotta eat something. And ground that extra energy, okay? You’ll get all weak and shaky if you don’t.”

“Aww, you do care,” Max teased, ruffling Michael’s hair as he and Isobel stepped away.

“Only cause I’ll be the one cleaning up after your dumb ass if you come down too hard,” Michael huffed, though he was still grinning, and Isobel could still feel the echo of his presence in her mind, like little sparkles in the dark.

She felt less euphoric after grounding and eating, but somehow more drunk, without feeling actually drunk. Which, when it came down to it, just meant even less inhibited than usual. She knew both her brothers already considered her frankness and willingness to overshare embarrassing, but she didn’t care. Especially now. She’d had enough of lies to last her a lifetime.

So when Michael made moves to leave, Isobel grabbed his arm and yanked him back down onto the couch, swinging her legs over his lap for good measure. “Forget it,” she said. “You’re staying here tonight.”

“Yeah, how’re you meant to take care of us if you leave?” Max grinned. Turned out casting spells put him in a spectacularly good mood, which Isobel was already trying to figure out how to use for blackmail material. 

“Ah, you’re fine,” Michael huffed. “You don’t need me hanging around.”

“You _think_ we don’t,” Max corrected, ever the pedant. “That doesn’t mean it’s true, Michael. Right, Iz?”

“Right,” she agreed. “Just stay, quit this stupid…lone cowboy act.”

Michael shook his head, but sloped a little lower on the couch. “Fine, fine.”

He stayed there while Max and Isobel got ready for bed and both hesitated in the hallway outside Max’s room and the guest room opposite it. She could feel Max’s unwillingness to be alone, and there was something about the idea of lying in bed on her own that made Isobel uneasy too. They hadn’t shared a bed since they were kids, but Isobel asked with a tilt of her eyebrows whether Max would mind, and his eyes widened in agreement.

But leaving Michael alone on the couch without either of them felt just as bad. Inevitably, it was Isobel who stomped back into the living room and poked at his shoulder. “Hey.”

Michael opened his eyes and frowned. “You okay?”

“You really wanna be alone right now?”

“No?” He blinked after he said it, looking completely taken aback by his own answer. “Uh.”

“Good.” She smacked his shoulder again, gently. “C’mon. Max has a huge bed, we’ll fit.”

“Uh…” Michael hesitated. “Seriously?”

“Yes, idiot. Come on, get up. Max and I used to sleep over in each other’s rooms all the time, so this is just making up for lost time we should’ve had with you too.”

Michael snorted, but he did sit up and follow her, barefoot in just his t-shirt and boxers. Max was on the far side when they got into his room, and Isobel flopped down next to him with no ceremony and beckoned for Michael to follow. “Come on.”

“Turn the light off too,” Max mumbled.

Michael looked like he didn’t know whether to smile or frown, but he turned the light off and got gingerly under the covers next to Isobel. Any other night, she might have stayed up, maybe let the awkwardness of it get to her a little. Right now, lying safely between her favourite people, Isobel fell asleep in record time.


	2. Michael

It had gone well, Michael told himself as he drove into town. Incredibly well, given that it was really Max and Isobel’s first proper casting. Neither of them had so much as spun a charm before, but the power rush had been immense. It wasn’t surprising – he’d even predicted it, guessing that their abilities, so like his own, would mean an equal depth of spark. Neither of them had even had a bad comedown from it, which he’d been worried about.

It had gone well. So why did he feel so weird?

Side-effect of working with other casters for once, maybe. He’d never properly done that before – it was his one weak spot, as far as his experience was concerned. He was solitary by necessity, and always had been. So maybe that was all this was; an unbalanced feeling resulting from practicing an act in conjunction with others rather than going it solo as he always had before. That had to be it.

He’d left early to give himself time for a wind-down before he had to start work. Half an hour in his trailer raising, tethering, and grounding his energy, another five minutes stood outside in the already-hot morning sun letting it pour down on him, emptying him while he recited chants in a low murmur and wound a spell of calm around himself. 

It worked, to a degree. He started work easy enough. And then found himself leaving, completely without meaning to. He drove off up the road to Foster’s Ranch and then turned off it, heading out into the desert. He drove till he felt like he should stop, then got out and paced. Back and forth, breaking his spell from that morning, winding himself right back up, ratcheting himself higher and higher until he was ready to explode – and then he shoved all that energy down into ground with none of the care he usually showed, screaming so loud his throat felt sore enough to bleed afterwards.

The shockwave almost blew out his tyres, his whole truck jumping into the air like a startled cat, only five hundred times as heavy and clanking the whole way. 

Michael pressed his hands over his eyes and screamed again, secure in the knowledge that no one was out here to hear him. Especially not Max or Isobel.

He didn’t know exactly what was bugging him, but it had to be related to their memory spell, their attempt to unearth their history. And that history was always going to be associated with Noah for him now.

He couldn’t bear for them to know how much he missed Noah, and how furious and scared he was about what had happened to him. Could it happen to them too? Had whatever freakish coven they’d been born into put curses on their organs as well, to kill them from a distance at some trigger they could only guess at?

Noah’s heart had begun to twist, he’d said like an invisible hand had clamped down around it and squeezed, when he’d started to tell them about their past. Michael had no right to feel his loss this keenly – he’d been Isobel’s husband, and Max’s brother-in-law. But Noah had treated him like a brother-in-law too. Right up until he’d stabbed his fork into Michael’s jugular. 

If they did manage to recover their memories, would speaking about it kill them too? They’d all decided it was worth the risk, and if Michael had been making the choice only for himself, he wouldn’t have even hesitated. But Max and Isobel were all he had, and the possibility of either of them getting hurt – especially after what Isobel had been through with Noah – ate at him.

Too late now. They’d cast the spell already.

Or maybe not.

Michael was back in his truck almost before he was aware of moving, and he floored it on his way back to the junkyard. Sanders tried to corner him with a furious demand about where the hell he’d ridden off to, but Michael brushed him off impatiently.

He was busy. He had something more important to do. 

He swung himself down into his bunker, the sanctum he’d only revealed to Max and Isobel recently. It had been only his before that, warded to hell and back, spells and charms and sigils literally in the walls. Max and Isobel were both still too green to really pick up on most of it, but he’d still had to break several spells to allow them in at all. 

They’d tried before that, at his invitation. Neither of them could really believe that he’d been casting basically his whole life without telling them, but they’d believed it a little more when they couldn’t even see the bunker hatch properly till he pointed it out to them. He’d practiced invisibility and notice-me-not spells for a lot of his youth, after all, and he was damn good at them.

At least he knew the risks. He’d been honing his spark and growing it for years while Max and Isobel lived normal lives. It wasn’t right that he’d let them cast that memory spell with him when they were still so new to all this.

He’d put protection spells on them before, but only little ones, wary of them noticing what he was doing. He had hair from both of them ready for the occasion though, and a feverish intensity running through him that drove everything else from his mind. He was going to weave a shield around both of them, so if anything did come for them, at least they wouldn’t be first in line.

He had everything he needed right where he was. Hair from their heads, fabric from clothes they’d worn, dirt from their footsteps. Basil and cactus for general protection, devil’s shoestring to ward off outside aggressors, garlic and bay for specifically magical attacks, and salt against misfortune. Michael liked salt and pepper for spells – he’d been swiping packets of them from diners since he figured out what he could use them for other than seasoning his food, and he had plenty of practice with them.

Walnut shells held the components, his power in place of glue to hold the pieces together. The activation made him dizzy, he poured so much of himself into it, but that had always been his style. He didn’t truck with untied spirits or deities or any other nebulous power that didn’t belong to him – he didn’t trust them. 

Charms complete, he dragged himself out of the bunker and back into his truck. Max was closer. School should be just letting out now, but Max would still be there. He supervised all sorts of stuff like homework clubs and library sessions. Michael was so sure he’d be there that he didn’t even bother calling him till he’d parked in the smaller parking lot round the back, where the teachers tended to leave their cars. 

Max picked up after the third ring. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Which building’re you in? I got a present for you.”

“Uh, Art. A present?”

“Yeah, see you in a second.” Michael touched the back of Max’s truck as he passed it, a reassuring pat. He’d gotten more into animism over the years, after he’d given up denying that his own truck had something like a soul. A fleeting thought crossed his mind for putting a separate protection spell on Max’s truck, and on Isobel’s car, but it slid away as he walked, too focused on getting to Max to give it any more attention.

Max met him outside the building, something Michael normally would’ve teased or snapped at him for, depending on his mood. Max’s wariness of Michael coming near his students had been funny for a while, and quickly begun to rankle after that. Now though, Michael just held out the charm he’d made and smiled when Max took it and visibly jolted.

“Whoa. What is this?”

“Protection charm.”

“I can _feel_ it.” Max said, bewildered. “Is that normal?”

“Depends on the person.” Michael clapped his shoulder. “I gotta get Isobel’s to her, can’t stick around.”

“Wait, hang on.” Max frowned and leaned closer. “Hey, did you have any weird dreams last night?”

Michael’s first thought was to make a sex joke, before rationality intervened and pointed out that they’d all slept in the same bed, and the last thing he wanted to do was make that even weirder. “I don’t remember dreaming at all last night,” he said honestly. “What did you dream?” It couldn’t be memories already, could it?

“I don’t know.” Max looked tired, now Michael was looking. Tired and over-caffeinated. “We were all together, I know that. I can’t remember it, but I know that symbol was in it – the one I used to draw all the time when we were kids, the one you told me not to get tattooed. Why did you do that?” He swayed closer, and gripped Michael’s upper arm with a startling strength. “You remember that? Did you know it was magical?”

He was freaking out, eyes wild and unblinking. And maybe Michael was still keyed up from his burst of protective energy, but for some reason his reaction, instead of pulling away like he normally would, was to throw his arms around Max and hug him tightly.

Max hugged him back without even a second’s hesitation, holding on like he didn’t ever want to let go. Michael had always played the part of bratty little brother to Max’s overbearing elder, especially as they’d grown up and gone down their separate paths, but when it came to magic, he was the elder and Max was the novice. If Max was freaking out, it was Michael’s fault for not taking care of him and guiding him properly.

“It looked magical,” he said, slightly muffled. Screw Max for being so tall anyway, when it meant that Michael’s mouth got crushed against his shoulder when they hugged. He squeezed him and stepped back so they could look at each other, but kept his hand on Max’s shoulder, and Max kept holding onto his upper arm. “I didn’t know for sure. But y’know, I figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to get anything inked on you that you didn’t know was safe. It could be the magical equivalent of a swastika for all we know.” If they’d had time, they could’ve shown Noah and asked him.

Max nodded, the tension draining out of him a little bit. “Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry, I’ve had like…three coffees, I’m really wired.”

“Relax, okay? If you’re remembering stuff, hey, wasn’t that the whole point?”

Max nodded again, letting out a breath and finally managing a smile. “Yeah. It was just really intense. I’ve been remembering stuff really intensely all day, actually.”

“Yeah?” Michael brightened. “That’s great! I mean, that’s a really good sign.”

“Haven’t you?”

Michael shook his head. “But that’s okay. It’s been less than twenty-four hours, y’know? Let it sink in and get to work. And hey.” He grinned and smacked Max’s shoulder gently. “Maybe this is proof you really are the oldest. You’d have more to remember if you were, right?”

That got a laugh out of Max, and he gave Michael’s arm a final squeeze before letting go. “That’s true. Sorry, I guess this is all just really new to me still.”

“Good thing you’ve got me to be your spicy Yoda then, huh?” Michael grinned. “Go take care of your kids, man.”

“Yeah. Thanks for…whatever this is.” Max snorted and held up the walnut shell before tucking it into his pocket. “Should I keep it on me?”

“Yeah, just carry it round with you, and tell me if it starts leaking. It’s just got some herbs in it, don’t worry,” he added, hamming up the long-suffering tone at Max’s alarmed look.

“Alright. See you later, man.”

Michael actually checked in with Isobel before driving to her, because there was never a guarantee that she’d be where he thought she was. She didn’t pick up, but messaged him a few seconds after he hung up to say she was out with her mom, and they were getting dinner together so she wouldn’t be back till later.

It was only then that Michael realised that he hadn’t eaten all day. He told her he was leaving a gift for her at her place, but drove through town to go to the Crashdown first, absolutely consumed with the need for as many fries as his painfully empty stomach could hold. He couldn’t even get it to go and wait to eat it at Isobel’s, as he would’ve done normally. He had to park and go in, eating at the counter and laughing sheepishly when Carl behind the counter asked if he wanted thirds after his seconds.

“You ever forget to eat?” Michael asked him.

“Nah, but my sister does.” Carl refilled his coffee. “Gets so focused on doing one thing, she tunes the whole world out, including her own belly. That what you did?”

“Yeah.” Michael shook his head and took another bite of his burger. “Tuned everything out, just like that.”

Carl’s comment about being focused stuck with him after he left, detouring to leave the charm at Isobel’s before heading back to the junkyard. He’d always found it easy to sink into something that interested him, but it had been a long time since time had gotten away from him so badly he’d forgotten to eat.

Longer still since he’d allowed himself to become distracted from his actual job too, at least so obviously. Sanders’ angry face jumped into his mind, and guilt started to curdle his earlier sense of achievement at the protection spells. He always gave as good as he got when it came to Sanders and his sharp comments, but he felt like he’d crossed a line today.

The old man had closed up shop by the time Michael got back, and he checked the job list and started getting to work on what was there. Again, it was like his brain’s ability to concentrate on anything but the task at hand was non-existent. He worked his way through the entire to-do list, going on after dark. He hadn’t reordered the list in a logical way, so he had to turn on the floodlights to keep going, but he didn’t mind. He needed to get it all done, no matter what.

And then it was done. He was done. 

He usually went to the Pony, but all he wanted to do after all that was sleep. He fell into bed without even showering, and dropped off instantly. 

No dreams. Not even a flicker.

The weird focus continued the next day. Michael slept in late, then avoided Sanders and avoided work too, instead getting sucked into reading a book he’d borrowed from Rosa about Catholic mysticism. He made his nasty comments in a notebook rather than in the margins, out of respect, but he still doubted he’d ever get over his dislike of religion enough to ever work with a deity, especially not the Christian one.

He missed lunch again, and ate out again for an early dinner, even though he couldn’t afford it. He was craving pad Thai, and he couldn’t seem to stop himself once he realised it. 

Michael couldn’t quite get his head around what was going on with him before a familiar car pulled up at the junkyard in the early evening. Not Alex’s usual style, while he was in town. He’d usually come over after dark, keeping their little thing plausibly deniable. Michael forgot all about the remnants of the noodles in the takeout box and leaned back in his lawn chair to watch as Alex got out, thankfully not in uniform. He’d come over in uniform once or twice before, and Michael always hated it.

Alex looked good now though. Soft, actually, in a grey sweater that made his shoulders look broader than normal. He shifted awkwardly as he came walked over, looking away like he was searching for anyone else who might see them. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Michael put the takeout box down on the ground and pushed himself to his feet. “Day off?”

“Yeah.” Alex looked away and then back, dark eyes electrifying when they met Michael’s, as always. “Had a late night at the Pony. Thought you’d be there.”

Michael’s lips twisted. “I try to only prop up the bar six days outta seven.”

Alex’s eyes went flat, his own lip curling in that barely-perceptible way that Michael was so familiar with. And suddenly he was sick of it, and sick of himself, and sick of Alex and the way he acted and the way he spoke when Michael needled him pointlessly like this. He didn’t want to dance these steps for the hundredth time. So he stepped closer, nice and slow, a little buzz going through him when Alex’s gaze dropped to his mouth. There were much better things they could be doing with their mouths, after all.

Alex never would have let him if he hadn’t already ascertained that they were alone, Michael knew it, but it would always be a thrill to kiss Alex in the open. Alex breathed out heavily through his nose and slid one arm around Michael’s back, his other hand cradling his face as Michael clutched the back of his neck and dragged him in, opening his mouth almost immediately to flick his tongue against Alex’s, swallowing Alex’s soft, wanting noise and swaying closer, letting himself lean into Alex’s solidity, however briefly. 

He bit at Alex’s lip as he pulled away, heat going through him when he opened his eyes to see Alex staring at him. No longer awkwardly glancing away, now focused only on Michael. There was nothing in the world like being the centre of Alex’s attention. Michael stepped back and trailed his hand down Alex’s arm to get him to follow as he turned and headed for the open door of his trailer. 

Alex was all over him as soon as they got inside, always braver with the door closed, but something still had Michael on edge. That odd flash of feeling sick of their bullshit from before, maybe. It made him push back against Alex more than usual, kiss him harder, an odd desperation beginning to take root in him as though this was the last time.

It could always be the last time, of course, but he hadn’t been so aware of that for a while. And there was no concrete reason for urgency now – Alex had been stationed in Roswell for months now, and he wasn’t moving any time soon. But maybe that was it. They hadn’t been in such close proximity to each other since high school, but Michael had still had to find out about Alex being stationed here from Maria and Rosa at the Pony.

It was agonising, being so close and still being kept at such a distance. Michael pushed Alex down on his bed and stared down at him, chest heaving. Alex only looked taken aback for a second before appreciation seeped into his expression, and Michael swallowed before yanking his shirt off and diving down to kiss him again. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t even think of stopping.

Everything faded but Alex, and the furious, desperate need to love him.

It hadn’t been so bad for a long time. Michael barely noticed his own arousal; he was so focused on taking Alex apart. Every gasp he got out of him, every moan, every bitten-off exclamation was simultaneous relief and fuel on the fire. Alex came, and Michael didn’t stop, fucking him into oversensitivity, and once he was done, he pulled Alex’s legs over his shoulders and started eating him out, something he’d never done with Alex before. He’d thought about it, but had somehow convinced himself that Alex wouldn’t want it. But shit, the noises Alex was making cleared that misconception right up.

Michael got lost in it, eyes closed and mouth at work, one hand pulling Alex’s cheeks apart, the other on Alex’s chest while Alex himself moaned on every exhale, twitching and trembling helplessly for long, glorious minutes before panting out a plea for Michael to stop. Michael slowed, but stayed where he was, breathing steadily into Alex’s inner thigh for a moment before fixing his mouth there instead, drinking in the sound of Alex’s voice cracking as he sucked a mark there.

“Shit,” Alex gasped. “Fuck, oh – Guerin –”

“Michael,” Michael said in a low voice, against the wet skin he’d just had his mouth on.

“What?”

Michael had no idea what had possessed him to correct Alex like that, and closed his eyes, ignoring his burning cheeks and lifting Alex’s right thigh higher so he could bite the curve of his ass. Alex shuddered, his heel digging into Michael’s back, leg looped comfortably over Michael’s shoulder. If he could stay here forever, he would be happy. Face hidden from view, coaxing pleasure out of Alex’s body.

Alex reached for him though, threading fingers into his hair and pulling gently. “Guerin.”

“Michael,” Michael said again, again without meaning to, and both to cover his embarrassment and to stall Alex from leaving, he lowered Alex’s legs to the bed and lay down on top of him, nosing a kiss into his neck, dragging the bridge of his nose along the barely-rough line of his jaw.

“Michael?” Alex repeated uncertainly, and it was – it was heartbreaking, actually, it was agony to hear the man he loved say his name like it was unfamiliar in his mouth. Because it _was_ unfamiliar in his mouth. He was _Guerin_ to Alex, another layer of distance between them that they’d never breached. 

He exhaled against Alex’s neck shakily and got up in a fluid movement, not looking at him. He ducked into the bathroom instead, two whole steps away. He could hear Alex sitting up as he grabbed mouthwash and took a mouthful, swilling it round his teeth and tongue before spitting it into the sink. 

“Are you okay?” Alex asked, as he ducked down and turned on the tiny faucet to swill a mouthful of water too. 

“Sure,” Michael lied. He straightened and went back to Alex, kneeling on the bed and taking his face in his hands, half pulling Alex up and half sinking down to kiss him. “Just wanted to do that,” he breathed against Alex’s lips, not letting him reply before he kissed him again, and again, and again. Bearing Alex back down onto the bed, tongue in his mouth, thumbs against his cheekbones tipping his face into it the way Alex liked. 

Alex allowed the distraction, blatant though it was. He allowed Michael everything, when they were together like this. Slow and steady, Michael worked him until they were both hard again, and then he slid off the bed and onto his knees on the floor, pulling Alex around so he could fit between his legs again and suck him off. Right leg over his shoulder this time, the stump of Alex’s leg rubbing against his spine and not digging in the way a heel could. Michael liked the enclosed feeling, the way Alex could pull him in and thrust up into his mouth, the way his hands flexed in Michael’s hair and held on so tight.

Like before, Michael’s own hard-on was secondary. Not even that – tertiary, or even further down in his focus. He disappeared into the moment, into Alex, in making him feel so good, better than he’d ever felt before. Michael could give him that, he’d give him anything, everything Alex wanted, he could be whatever Alex wished for.

He jerked himself off just to get it out of the way, and kept going on Alex until he cried out and came down his throat, his whole body arching into it. Michael kept him in his mouth until he was completely soft, and rested his forehead on Alex’s left thigh afterwards, trying to get his breathing back to a steady pace.

“Fuck,” Alex breathed after a long minute of silence. He let out a loud sigh, then laughed a little and said, “Fuck,” again.

“Yeah,” Michael rasped, eyes closed. 

Alex sighed again. “Can you pass me my phone?”

Michael pressed his forehead harder into Alex’s thigh. “It’s not late.”

“I gotta get back, Guerin.”

“ _Michael._ ”

“What?” Bemused again. “Are you alright?”

“Just stay.” Michael couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t move. He inhaled the scents of sex and sweat and Alex’s body and spoke on his exhale. “Can’t you just stay?”

Alex sighed. “I can’t. I mean…I don’t have any of my stuff.”

“You could borrow mine.”

“You got a spare liner for my leg lying around?” Alex asked flatly, and lifted his leg off Michael’s shoulder, pulling away so Michael had to let go of him and lift his head. “Seriously, are you okay?”

Michael looked up at him from his position on his knees, at Alex’s fluffed-up, sex-wrecked hair and naked chest, the wary expression on his face. That feeling from outside was back, that sick-of-this feeling, and he heard himself say, “The hell are we doing, Alex?”

Alex’s expression shuttered so fast that Michael could practically hear the slam of steel doors. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean…” What the hell was _he_ doing? His chest hurt, a physical ache somewhere deep inside, behind his lungs. Like something in him was being pulled apart. He found himself rubbing his sternum without meaning to, pressing down hard and shaking his head. 

“Guerin?”

“Michael,” Michael snapped, the pain resolving, hardening. He knelt up so he wasn’t so far below Alex and glared at him. “I mean I’m sick of this, Alex. All of this, this sneaking around, this…this shit where you turn up and I roll over and do whatever you want.”

“That’s not fair,” Alex said, sounding winded. He took a deep breath and pulled his legs up onto the bed, out of Michael’s reach. “Guerin – Michael.” He swallowed, blinking rapidly. “That’s not how it is.”

“What?”

“I don’t – you do whatever I want?” He gave a short, ugly laugh. “Right, sure – right up to the point you shut down and tell me to fuck off, every single time. And the…we’re not sneaking around.” At Michael’s scoff of disbelief, Alex shook his head. “Don’t, it’s not like that.”

“Like I’m not just a convenient fuck whenever you’re in town?” Michael had intended it to come out harsh, but his voice wobbled, and he tried to smile to cover it, pretending again. “You only come over after dark, you don’t come near me otherwise. No one knows about this, about us, you told me, you said we had to keep it a secret, and you don’t, you don’t even use my name, do you even care about me?”

Alex gaped at him, and some awful part of Michael was viciously pleased to see how devastated he looked, satisfied by shots that had landed well. The rest of him just didn’t want his eyes to well up or his voice to crack again.

“How can you even ask me that?” Alex breathed after several seconds of stunned staring. “Of course I care!”

And Michael had to know, suddenly. Had to ask, right now, when Alex might give an honest answer. “Do you love me?” He’d intended to leave it there, but his mouth ran on without him again. “Because I love you, and you know it.”

Alex’s mouth opened, and nothing came out. He closed it, swallowed, tried again, but only managed to speak on his third attempt. “How was I supposed to know that? You’ve…you never said that before.”

“I didn’t think I needed to.” Michael’s knees were beginning to hurt, but he didn’t move. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“It wasn’t. I thought.” Alex ducked his head and choked out an almost-hysterical laugh. “I thought if anything, I was your convenient fuck.” He looked up again, meeting Michael’s eyes. “I can’t get within a hundred miles of you without coming over. You could set your watch by me. I thought you knew that.”

“I didn’t.” Michael leaned forward, putting his hands on Alex’s thighs. “Alex.” He waited for Alex to look at him again, his chest still aching a little. “ _Stay_. Please. Please –” His voice wobbled again and he ducked his head, embarrassed but still going, the words pulled out of him like they were on a line being reeled in. “I hate watching you leave, I want you stay, I’d do anything for you to stay. I wanna be – I want us to be an _us,_ okay? I love you, I wanna tell people about it, I wanna tell Max and Isobel, I’ve been keeping so many secrets from them and this is just one more and I hate it, I hate keeping secrets from the people I love, do you get that? I wanna tell them, and I wanna tell you about them, about us, about everything we can do.”

Alex’s hands skidded up Michael’s arms and shoulders, tugging until he was crawling up onto the bed, between Alex’s legs so Alex could wrap his arms around him and hold on tight. Michael breathed shakily into his neck and clung back, legs wrapped around him like Alex’s were hitched around him. 

“It isn’t that simple,” Alex whispered, and Michael pulled back so they could look at each other, gripping the side of Alex’s neck with his good hand.

“It is,” he pleaded. “It can be. I can take care of it, whatever you’re worried about, okay? I can take care of it.”

“You can barely take care of yourself,” Alex said, not meeting Michael’s eyes, and Michael scowled.

“You don’t have a clue what I can do. Just – look.” And he reached out with his powers and lifted every object in the main part of the Airstream that wasn’t nailed down a foot in the air.

Alex leaned back and looked around, blinking. “Okay. Okay, I’ll admit…that’s a really good illusion.” He was frowning, looking from object to object, trying to figure out the tell, because illusions always had a tell. There were always blurs, or stutters, or blips.

“It’s not an illusion.” Michael nodded to the pillows floating at the end of the bed. “Touch them.”

Alex reached out and did, his frown deepening. “I don’t understand.” He waved his hand above and below it, looking for strings, and Michael brought a few objects closer – the hot sauce and a pan from the counter, the bottle of lube that had rolled onto the floor, their discarded clothes.

“It’s not an illusion,” he said again. “I can move things with my mind. I’ve been able to do it since I was a kid. It’s magic, but it’s like it’s supercharged, and Max and Isobel have these powers too. Not like mine,” he added, watching Alex’s eyes widen as he poked the lube bottle. “And they haven’t trained themselves in normal magic like I have, but we’re all powerful, like, abnormally powerful.”

“This isn’t possible,” Alex whispered.

“I know, but it is.” Michael squeezed the side of his neck gently. “We found out, just recently – we’re from some sorta coven cult thing, and so was Noah, but when he tried to tell us about it, some spell activated and killed him, and not even Max could heal him. We don’t know where we’re from or how we got like this, but we did a spell a couple nights ago to try and bring our memories back, because we don’t remember anything from before we were found outside Roswell, all alone in the desert – we didn’t even have clothes, we didn’t speak, we, we don’t know anything, and we’re trying to figure out, and I think the spell must’ve done something weird because I’d never tell you this normally, but I was just so sick of all the secrets.” He was breathing fast, frantic as he realised that something was wrong. “I’m so sick of hiding things, I hate it. Telling Max and Isobel I’ve been casting spells since we were kids felt so good. Fuck, I – fuck.” He covered his mouth with both hands, really starting to panic.

All his secrets he’d kept so carefully and diligently for so many years, and he’d spilled them all to Alex in a moment of spell-addled desperation. Alex was staring at him like he had no idea who Michael was, and all Michael could think was that Max and Isobel were going to kill him.


	3. Max

“Had to happen eventually,” Lissa said as Max breathed into the bucket wedged between his feet. He didn’t feel so much like he was going to throw up anymore, but he definitely wasn’t feeling great. “You haven’t taken a sick day the whole time I’ve known you.”

“Haven’t the whole time I’ve worked here,” Max mumbled. He never got sick. None of them ever had.

And all of a sudden he was sitting on one of the picnic benches outside, back in the past. He’d been seeing a lot of himself at various ages over the last couple of days, but every time it was embarrassing to realise how dorky he’d looked as a kid. The backwards baseball cap hadn’t done him any favours at all, but at least Michael was wearing one too, and they both looked like baby-faced children. Isobel had bangs, and she was bitching at teen Max, who looked disgruntled as all hell.

“Other kids get sick days,” she snapped. “Don’t be so annoying.”

“It’s still lying,” Max complained. “It’s like crying wolf. Mom knows you’re not really sick, she just lets you get away with it.”

“Oh grow up.” Isobel glared at him. “It looks _more_ normal to have sick days than to always be perfectly healthy. Right, Michael?”

Michael held his hands up, leaning away from both of them. “Whoa, I am not getting involved in this.”

Max snapped back into the present and jumped at the feeling of a hand on his back, and a person sitting at his side. Lissa jumped when he did and leaned away just like Michael had, her hands raised. “Whoa, sorry. You totally zoned out for a second there.” She looked more worried than she had before. “I’m glad you’re not driving home.”

“Yeah, me too.” The zoning out was becoming a major problem. He’d only just made it into school that morning before being overtaken by another flashback, and having on while he was on the road would probably be deadly. “Isobel should be here soon.”

As if summoned, the doors to the foyer opened, and Isobel walked in, frowning when she saw him. “God, I thought you were exaggerating, but you really do look like shit.”

“Thanks, Iz.” Max rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “I’m actually feeling better now.”

“Good, because if you throw up in my car, you’re paying for the clean-up.”

“You’re very intimidating,” Lissa said, frowning at her, and then blinked as though she hadn’t meant to say that. “Uh, I mean –”

“No, you’re right,” Isobel cut her off quickly with an insincere smile, grabbing Max’s arm and tugging him towards the doors. “I cultivate it on purpose. Thanks for looking after Max!” 

Max stared at her as they made their way outside. “What the hell was that?”

“In the car,” she said, voice hard.

“Okay…”

Once in the car, Isobel’s expression stayed stony as she started to drive. “Something went wrong with the spell.”

“Yeah.” Max sighed heavily. “I mean, it’s kinda working, but not the way we wanted it to.”

“What?” Isobel didn’t look away from the road, but she sounded confused. “What’re you talking about? It’s not working at all.”

“It is for me?” Max raised his eyebrows. “I mean, not in a good way, but I’m definitely getting the memory effect.”

“What?!” She did glance at him then, quick and furious. “You remember stuff from before we were found?”

“No – no, not that far back. But I’m remembering all sorts of other stuff. Like I’m getting launched into memories at the slightest provocation, and while my mind goes back in time, my body just zones out.”

“Oh that’s weird.” Isobel frowned. “I haven’t been getting that at all.”

“What’s been happening to you?”

“Tell me a lie.”

Max blinked. “Okay, uh…my hair’s brown. Wait. What?”

“What did you mean to say?”

“Red.”

“Try another.”

“My eyes are brown. Oh, weird.” He made a face. “I meant to say blue. So you’re…what, I can’t lie to you?”

“Yeah. And I can’t lie out loud either. And people keep telling me the truth when they don’t mean to, like whatsherface back there telling me she thinks I’m intimidating. Which, y’know, flattering.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “But I think it’s probably not what she wanted to say.”

“We need to tell Michael. I bet he’s got some weird side-effect too.”

“Mmhm. Can you message him? Tell him to meet us at your place.”

“Yeah, sure.” Max slid his phone out of his pocket. “Has it been getting worse for you? Like, I was remembering stuff really strongly the morning after we did the spell, but I didn’t start zoning out till today.”

“I don’t know.” Isobel frowned. “I didn’t really figure out something was going on till I had dinner with Mom yesterday.”

“Oh God. Was it okay?”

“No.” Isobel’s shoulders slumped. “I mean, it could’ve been a lot worse, but she really freaked out. We were talking about Noah and I was saying things I definitely didn’t mean to, and she came out with all this stuff about some ex-boyfriend of hers called _Rocko_ and it got _explicit._ ” She made a disgusted face. “So she freaked out and kinda ran away. That was not fun.”

“Jeez, Iz.”

“Yeah.” Isobel pretended to gag. “It was a total nightmare. And that’s not even all of it!”

Max listened to her vent as she drove out to his house, looking down at his phone every now and then to see if Michael had seen his message yet. He hadn’t by the time they arrived, and he got out slowly, holding onto the outside of the car. Isobel gave him a concerned look, which because it was Isobel, came off as kind of accusatory. “Are you okay?”

“I kinda threw up everything I ate today, so I’m not feeling too great, no.”

“Oh, I forgot about that.” She grimaced and ushered him towards the house. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really. Maybe?” Max followed her in and sighed when he realised he’d left his hat back in his classroom. 

“Sit.” Isobel shooed him towards the couch and went to nose around in his kitchen. “What set that off, anyway?”

“The puking? I, uh, I think I overheard a couple of kids talking about drinking? And I remembered that party we went to in junior year, at Jessie Baker’s place.”

“Oh God, where you had like, eight beers in about an hour and threw up in her yard?”

Max winced. “That’s the one.” He’d been nervous, because Liz had been there, and Liz had hardly ever come to any of the dumb parties Isobel went to. Max had only gone because Liz had told him she was going and he’d immediately had a hundred idiotic ideas about finding her at the party and talking to her, and maybe dancing with her, and maybe kissing her. Maybe more. 

He was there, suddenly, but it wasn’t a total zone-out like before. It overlaid his living room, echoes of laughing, shouting teenagers and thumping music shivering through his mind, his heart aching as he watched Liz watch Rosa, who was giving another girl a stick-and-poke tattoo on her foot. The memory skipped, no dialogue coming through clear, as Max drank to try and get up some courage, and then drank some more when a few of the other boys cheered him on. Liz emerged from a room with wild eyes, having lost Rosa. She whirled away from Max when he couldn’t give her any information, and Max kept drinking, and kept drinking, and then – 

“Max!”

“I got it,” Max groaned, putting his head between his knees and taking deep breaths through a horrible wave of nausea. “Oh God. That’s what happened,” he muttered as Isobel dropped down next to him to rub his back. “I thought about it, and it’s like I was there. It’s like I’m watching myself, but not at the same time. Like I’m feeling what I felt, but I’m standing outside my own body and watching it happen from a different angle.”

“Like a movie?”

“Sorta.” The nausea began to ebb, and Max sighed, sitting up a bit, holding himself up with his forearms on his thighs. “But there’s like…it’s really weird, the world’s blurry wherever my memory-self isn’t directly looking. And the longer he doesn’t look, the blurrier it gets. And I know I couldn’t go and explore away from him or anything, the memory’s tied to what I remember.”

“Makes sense.” Isobel squeezed his wrist. “You want some water?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Max sat back properly as she got up, going to the kitchen to get them both glasses of water. “It wasn’t so bad this time. Maybe because I’d already visited that memory.” He held out his hand for the glass as Isobel came back and sat next to him again, twisted sideways a little so she could see him.

“At least you’re getting memories,” she frowned. “That was the whole point of this stupid spell.”

“Not the right memories though. These are all from after we were found. But it’s not just remembering things real clear – I’ve remembered things I definitely couldn’t remember before.” Max gulped water, draining the whole glass and holding it pressed between his hands afterwards, staring at the droplets instead of Isobel.

“Like what?” she said warily. “Like stuff from when we were kids?”

“Yeah. And the group home.” Max swallowed, pressing the glass harder between his hands. “I remembered…I remembered this – do you remember anything from back then?”

“From the group home? No.” Isobel shifted a little closer, touching her knee to his and reaching out to put her hand over his wrist. “It was so long ago, and I figured, y’know, we were probably traumatised or whatever. We didn’t even speak for like, months afterwards.”

“We didn’t need to.” Max looked at her at last, registering the worry she wasn’t bothering to conceal anymore. “We could talk to each other in our heads. Not like we do now either – we weren’t using words, we were just using feelings. And we could do it with Michael too.”

Isobel blinked, surprise softening her expression. “We could?”

“Yeah.” They both knew how much Michael would like that, even if he pretended otherwise. Like when they’d gotten their DNA tests back.

The memory washed over Max, pulling him under and back, an easy transition because they’d all been right here in his living room just a few years ago.

It looked different – he’d just bought it, with help from his parents, and it wasn’t completely furnished yet, even though he’d been living in it for a couple of months already. Isobel had sent her DNA in first without telling them, figuring that if there was something weird about them biologically, Michael would’ve already figured it out, and if it was something in her DNA, the company would just tell her the sample had been corrupted or something.

But it hadn’t been, and she’d wanted to know for some reason whether she and Max were really twins, or brother and sister, or even related at all, so he and Michael had sent their DNA in too. When the results had come back, Isobel had been too nervous to look, so Max had looked for all of them.

“Congratulations,” he’d said, a smile spreading slowly across his face. “You have a high chance of a twin in their system. That’d be me,” he’d added, dry, and Isobel had laughed, eyes wet. “And,” he said, looking back at the report, conscious of Michael fidgeting on the bench opposite them. “You’ve got a high chance of a brother. A half-brother.” He’d looked up at Michael and grinned.

Michael had been so shocked. Max could see him sitting across from him as if he was there in the present, a little younger, hair a little longer than it was now. “I’m your brother?” he’d said, like he couldn’t believe it. He’d ripped his own letter open to check, eyes wide. “I’m your brother?”

“So we’ve…we’ve got the same mom, or the same dad.” Isobel had beamed, already growing smug. “I told you, of course you’re our brother!”

“Like when we got our DNA tests back,” Max muttered, watching the half-there vision of Michael’s badly-concealed smile fade back into the past. “You remember that?”

“Uh, yeah.” Isobel snorted. “You kidding? I’m never letting go of that, it was my idea.”

Max smiled, and let it fall from his face after a second. “I never remembered anything from the group home before today. But I do now, and it’s like…crystal clear. Like it happened today, right in front of me, I remember it all now. You and Michael were pretty calm, but I was freaking out all the time. I was really, really scared.”

“About what?” Isobel’s grip tightened on his wrist, sliding down to peel his hand away from the glass and hold onto it.

He wanted to say he didn’t know, but he couldn’t. The effect of Isobel’s sudden inability to hear lies, he guessed. “Of being alone,” he said slowly. “I don’t understand why. Trauma, I guess, like you said. But I wouldn’t go anywhere alone. I was so scared. I cried all the time. You and Michael were scared too, but not like I was. I was having full-on screaming fits, throwing stuff around, having tantrums every five minutes.”

“Mom said you were really quiet when she brought us home,” Isobel said, surprised. “She mentioned it yesterday, so I know it’s true. She said the two of us were like, totally inseparable though. I forgot, but it’s true – I don’t think we even slept in separate rooms for the first time till like, a year after she and Dad brought us home.”

“And we’d still sneak into each other’s rooms after that,” Max murmured. “Every time I had a nightmare, remember, I’d sleep on your floor?”

“Yeah.” Isobel was smiling, he could hear it in her voice. “So you can’t’ve been that bad.”

“I was. I was scared I was gonna lose you too, like we’d lost Michael.” Max closed his eyes and squeezed her hand. “It was my fault we got separated from Michael.”

“What?” Isobel reared back, but didn’t let go of his hand. “What are you talking about?”

“I remembered it this morning.” Max couldn’t open his eyes, that awful mix of disbelief and shame burning through him again. He could hear his own screams echoing from twenty years ago in his ears, feel the brush of old panic like oily smoke in his lungs. “When Mom and Dad came to the group home that first time, I was having a meltdown, drawing all over the walls. That symbol I used to doodle all the time in high school, the one Michael told me not to get tattooed, that one. And you calmed me down and Michael grabbed the marker off me, and that’s when Mom and Dad came in, and the group home lady thought Michael had been the one drawing on the walls.”

Isobel wasn’t convinced. “So?”

“So they picked us, not him, because they thought he’d be too much trouble.” Max looked at her, trying to get her to understand. “It was my fault! It was my fault he got left behind and stuck in the system all those years. We should’ve put up more of a fight, if we hadn’t been – if _I_ hadn’t been so scared, I should’ve fought more! We shouldn’t’ve let them take us away and leave Michael behind.”

“Max!” Isobel gripped his hand hard enough to hurt and glared at him, refusing to let him look away. “Max. You were seven. _We_ were seven. And we were mute! You can’t blame yourself for this.”

“I drew on the walls, I was the problem child, and they thought it was Michael.” Max shook his head. “It’s not fair. How the hell am I supposed to look him in the eye knowing I’m the reason he got trapped in all those awful, shitty homes while we got adopted?”

“I don’t know, Max, maybe by realising that a seven-year-old can’t be responsible for the actions of the adults around him?” Isobel snapped. He could feel her own chill of guilt though, the gut-deep horror of realising how close it had been. 

“It was my fault,” Max said again, putting the glass down on the floor so he could rub his face with the hand Isobel wasn’t holding. “It was all my fault. He got starved, Iz. One of the homes he was in gave him an exorcism – they burned him! And that wouldn’t’ve happened if it weren’t for me.”

“Well it’s too late now.” Isobel drew herself up, trying to sound unruffled and failing. “You can’t go back in time and change things.”

“But it wouldn’t have –” He choked suddenly, hand flying to his throat. “Ah!”

“Oh, sounds like you just tried to tell an objective untruth.” Isobel smirked. “This whole truth-telling gig is kinda useful for that, y’know. I actually tried it out earlier with math questions – I can’t speak a wrong answer, so I can figure out the right one by just trying the possibilities till I find one I can say out loud. It’s pretty neat.”

“Mm.” Max rubbed his neck, perturbed. He’d been about to say that it wouldn’t have happened if not for him. “How come I can say it was my fault but I can’t say…what I was about to say? It was basically the same thing.”

“They must be different somehow.” Isobel shrugged. “Maybe one’s more objective than the other? It doesn’t seem to be working on you so hard though,” she added thoughtfully, giving him an appraising look. “You’re not blurting out stuff you don’t mean to like everyone else has. And you haven’t zoned out completely like you said you did before.”

“Yeah.” Max hadn’t realised it, but it was true. “Huh. Do you think we neutralise each other or something?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I don’t know much about magic. We need Michael for this stuff. Where the hell is he, anyway?”

Max shook his head and let go of her hand to dig his phone out of his pocket. “He’s seen my messages, but he hasn’t replied.”

“Ugh, typical. We’re having a crisis here!” She got to her feet in as dramatic a way as she could manage and stalked back towards the kitchen. “If we’re waiting, I’m eating too. I didn’t eat before I came and picked you up. Which, by the way? Super weird to pick a teacher up from school like a sick kid.”

Max managed a little smile, but kept staring down at the screen of his phone, at his message history with Michael. He’d had no memory before today of what they’d all looked like as children. He and Isobel had photos, of course, but they were always weird to look at, like they weren’t really _them._ And his earliest memories of Michael before today had been of him coming back to Roswell when he was eleven, and those memories had been strong on feelings and low on visuals.

He could remember with perfect clarity now what they’d all looked and sounded like as freshly-caught children, mute and scared, him almost insensible with terror. Michael had had such a round face, such chubby cheeks and ridiculous curls, a huge honey-coloured mop of them. Max had been pale and washed out, so often tear-streaked and red-faced from screaming. How anyone could look at the two of them and come to the conclusion that Michael was the problem child was beyond him, but his parents had done it.

He’d always felt horribly guilty over being adopted while Michael hadn’t, and clumsily tried to make it up to Michael in as many ways as possible over the years. It just killed him how unfair it was that they’d all been in the same boat at the beginning, but he and Isobel had been rescued while Michael had been left to drown. And now it turned out that he’d jeopardised Michael’s chances? 

Michael had always lived his life on the margins, and insisted angrily every time it was brought up that it was his own choice. But Max couldn’t help comparing their lives and hating himself. It wasn’t right. It seemed to him that he’d stolen what should have been Michael’s life, that he’d supplanted his own life’s rightful liver. 

He managed some peanut butter toast and more water, but still felt too awful to even bear the smell of the leftover pasta Isobel was heating up. He went to sit outside instead, and so had a perfect view of Michael’s truck as it approached, wheels kicking up dust in a cloud behind it.

Michael’s expression was grave as he climbed out, the silence oppressive after the loudness of his engine. “Hey,” he said, catching sight of Max only when he stood up, changing direction to go around to the porch rather than heading in through the front door. “You okay? Iz said you’d been sick.”

“Yeah, it’s not important.” Max took a deep breathe, insides squirming from the prospect of having to do this. “Look, Michael, I’ve got something to tell you.”

“I guarantee you it’s not worse than what I’ve got to tell you,” Michael muttered. The door opened and they both looked around as Isobel came out, half-empty bowl of pasta in her hand. 

“About time,” she complained. “Max puked up half his guts, and we’ve both been having really screwed-up side-effects from that spell we did.”

“Me too. Look.” Michael seemed to brace himself. “I’ve got bad news.”

“Oh God.” Isobel grimaced and set her pasta down on the edge of the fire pit. “What?”

Michael ducked his head, sweeping his hat off for a moment and running a hand through his hair before replacing it. “I told someone,” he said in a low voice. “About us.”

Max blinked, his own conflict suddenly falling into the background. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean I told someone about us.” Michael still didn’t look at them. “About everything – what we can do, the coven, Noah, all of it.”

Isobel lifted one hand slowly to cover her mouth, rendered uncharacteristically speechless. 

Max was still getting his head round what Michael was saying. “What…why?”

“Forget why!” Isobel said, strangled. “Who?”

Michael couldn’t have looked more miserable, or spoken more quietly. “Alex Manes.”

“Wha –” Isobel took a step forward and Max moved closer instinctively, some part of him worried that she was going to lash out. “From _high school_ Alex Manes?”

It only really sank in for Max then, and he looked back at Michael, real fear beginning to edge in among the confusion. “Air Force Sergeant Alex Manes?”

“Captain.” Michael grimaced even as he said it, and Isobel gave a hysterical not-quite shout.

“Oh, send him our congratulations on the promotion! What the hell, Michael! Why the hell would you do that?”

“I didn’t mean to.” Michael walked past them and sank into one of the porch chairs, still avoiding their eyes. “It just happened.”

Max grabbed Isobel’s arm as she sucked in a breath to start properly yelling, and shook his head. She gave him a warning look, but followed him when he went to sit down next to Michael. “Why Alex though?” he asked, trying to find a rational thread in it. “I didn’t think you’d even seen each other since high school.”

“We have.” Michael ducked his head again, hiding his face. “A…not a lot, exactly, but…it’s complicated.”

And Max remembered, the recollection hitting him so hard he almost fell back in his chair. He remembered their senior prom night, the event that had ended Liz and Kyle Valenti’s relationship and inadvertently led to what had been the best night of Max’s life (at that point anyway). His moment with Liz in the gazebo, their clumsy dance to the sound of the distant music from the gym, their almost-kiss.

Before all that. Kyle Valenti had hit Alex Manes, and Alex had hit him right back and Michael of all people, who had never cared about anyone but Max and Isobel, ran forward and pulled Alex away. Michael had checked he was okay. And Alex’s hand had lingered on Michael’s shoulder as he’d passed him, walking away without looking back.

Max didn’t think he would have remembered a detail like that before today, but now he could see it as if it was happening right in front of him. “Are you two a thing?” he asked, sounding more shocked than he’d meant to.

Michael seemed to sink a little, elbows heavy on his thighs, one hand curling round the back of his own neck. “It’s complicated,” he muttered. 

“In high school?” Max pressed, and Michael sighed, sitting up a little to rub at his bad hand.

“You never said anything,” Isobel said, quiet. She pulled a chair over and sat down too, close enough to both of them to touch.

“It wasn’t…” Michael made a face, eyes downcast. “It was complicated then too. We were never official, and we…his dad was the one who broke my hand.”

Max’s breath seemed to leave his body all at once, and he looked up at Isobel, expecting to see his own horror mirrored there. He found it, but fast-growing fury too. “Alex Manes’ dad did that?”

“Why didn’t you say?” Max asked desperately. Michael had always said it was a junkyard accident, and Sanders had seen it so he’d only let Max heal it slowly, over many years.

“Because we’d kill him,” Isobel said coldly. “I’ll kill him now, that _asshole._ ”

Michael’s lips twisted, like he wanted to smile but couldn’t. “You can’t.”

“Watch me. I’ll turn his brain to scrambled fucking eggs.” In that moment, Max could believe her. 

But Michael shook his head. “He’s not worth it. And I didn’t wanna say, back then. And Alex didn’t either. We were sorta together that summer, but my hand was…it made things harder. And then he went to basic, and I went to college.”

“But you kept seeing each other?” Max guessed, and Michael shrugged sadly.

“When we could. Never official. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, y’know? And other stuff too. S’complicated, like I said.”

“But you told him about us,” Max said.

Isobel made an impatient gesture and cut right to the chase. “Do you love him?”

“Yeah.” Michael rubbed both hands over his face. “Yeah. Always have, probably always will. He’s my Liz,” he added quietly, tipping his head towards Max, who absorbed that with an uneasy sense of inevitability.

The three of them had always joked that Liz was his kryptonite. He’d wanted to tell her the truth about himself and his abilities so many times over the years, and it often felt like his whole life revolved around her. When he and Liz had been together, everything had felt right. Not perfect – they loved each other fiercely, but that didn’t automatically equate to a perfect relationship, or even a harmonious one.

But his life felt grey without her, and that was just the truth of it. He’d long accepted that he would never love anyone but Liz Ortecho, and it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise to himself, and cruel to pretend otherwise to any other women. It was one of the things that freaked Liz out, which he couldn’t exactly blame her for. He’d never meant to put her under any pressure, but how else was she supposed to react to the revelation that she was responsible for Max’s ultimate happiness?

He hadn’t told her himself. Isobel had, in a moment of protective anger over what she thought was Liz jerking him around. It had been the final straw for Liz, who’d taken off again two years ago for a job in California. 

The memory that swam to the surface wasn’t as strong as the ones from before, like it really was Isobel and Michael’s presence that was nullifying the effect, or at least toning it down. Max could feel the warmth of his bed though, the pillow under the side of his head, the smile on his face as he stupidly stayed up far too late talking to Liz. Messages sent back and forth, New Mexico to California, the two of them unable to really cut themselves off for good.

Liz dated, Max knew, and one day she might find someone she could really love and settle with. But when she wasn’t dating anyone, he could tell by the way her messages to him would increase in volume. No one understood him the way Liz did. And he knew he offered something similar to her too, or she wouldn’t tell him so. Liz never lied to him, and it was one of the things that had made his lies to her stick in his throat as much as they had.

Already his brain was spinning – if Alex Manes was Michael’s Liz, and he knew, why couldn’t Max tell Liz too? Why couldn’t he finally be honest about this strange freakish magic he possessed?

Because she might decide he was of interest to the scientific community, his rational side responded. She loved him, he knew she did, but she was devoted to her work, and she had a ruthlessly ambitious streak. He was sure she would never turn him in or turn against him, but that rational side of him had always won out in the past. The risk was too great. The risk to Isobel and Michael too – it wasn’t just his neck on the line here.

“He’s in the Air Force,” he said, cutting into his own thoughts and drawing Michael and Isobel’s attention back to him. “Michael – where is he now?”

“Home, I think.” Michael shook his head. “He said he wouldn’t tell anyone, and I believe him, but…y’know, there’s a reason I wouldn’t’ve told him if I’d been in my right mind. You were right. Something in the spell went wrong.”

“What happened?” Isobel asked plaintively, dragging her chair even closer. “Did you think it went fine on the night?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Michael swept his hat off his head again, pushing his hand through his curls and tugging on them. “It went great, I thought. But since…it’s been weird, and it’s been getting worse.”

“What’s been happening to you?” Max asked, pulling his chair a little closer too, so all their knees were practically touching.

“It’s been like I can only focus on one thing at a time,” Michael said slowly, letting his hat dangle from his fingers, head still ducked. “I can get stuck on a project for a while, that’s not unusual, so I didn’t exactly notice at first? And it didn’t seem weird at the time. But I skipped out on work, twice now. I forgot to eat. It’s like I can only think about one thing, and everything else just falls away.”

“What sort of things?” Isobel asked, like she was trying to puzzle something out.

Michael shrugged, finally meeting her eyes for the first time. “I don’t know. Just stuff. Like making those charms for you. And when I did work, to catch up, I couldn’t stop till it was done, I just wanted it all outta the way. What about you two?” He glanced at Max. “What’s been happening to you?”

“I’ve become a human lie-detector,” Isobel said. “With a prompt function. And Max has become a human memory stick.”

“Not exactly,” Max grimaced. “It’s more like I remember something and then I get sucked into that memory. This morning I remembered a party I got too drunk at in high school and threw up in real life after completely zoning out for a good minute and a half. I really freaked out my class.”

Michael sat up a little bit. “You getting any memories from –”

“No.” Max leaned back in his chair. “But I’m getting ones I forgot I had, from when I was a kid. And others. And when I do remember them, it’s like I’m really there, they’re so vivid.”

“Hm. Tell me more about the lie-detecting,” Michael said, frowning at Isobel.

“I think it was pretty instant.” She sat back too, straightening her spine and taking a deep breath. “I saw Mom the day after the spell and she couldn’t tell anything but the truth while she was with me, and she kept telling me things she didn’t mean to. And I did it a bit too. And it was the same with our server, and some randos we saw while we were shopping, and literally anyone else who came into contact with me. Like my presence alone was enough to make them want to tell me the truth, and like, _want_ to tell me, y’know? Against their better judgement.”

“Like you were compelling them?” Michael asked. “Like you can in the mindscape?”

“Kinda?” Isobel wrinkled her nose. “But they don’t volunteer the information there. I have to ask them.”

“Weird.” Michael looked between them. “I don’t get it.”

“I do.” It came to Max out of nowhere, like the solution for a plot hole in one of his stories. He pointed at them each in turn. “Want, truth, memory. Get it?”

Isobel gave him an incredulous look. “No?”

“What was the spell’s driving desire, or whatever you called it?” Max asked Michael, who looked just as confused.

“We…want to remember the truth?”

“Exactly.” He pointed to them again, Michael, himself, and Isobel. “Want, remember, truth. Three components, technically, not two. And it split, like sauce.”

“That’s…no.” Michael looked almost offended by his conclusion. “That’s not how magic works!”

“Maybe it is for us,” Max suggested. “Magic shouldn’t work the way it does when we’re doing it, but it does. Maybe we have weird effects on spells, and you wouldn’t’ve known because you’ve never cast anything with anyone else before.”

Michael didn’t have a rebuttal to that, which was kind of satisfying. 

“That’s great,” Isobel said sardonically. “Good work figuring it out and everything, but how do we _fix_ it? This is absolutely not sustainable.”

“The best way to figure out what went wrong in a spell is to do more of them,” Michael sighed. “We could walk through the whole thing again and try to pinpoint where it went sideways.”

“What if that doubles the effects?” Max asked, starting to freak out. “It’s already bad now!”

“Well five minutes ago I would’ve said it doesn’t work like that, but honestly, right now?” Michael rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know. But we clearly can’t count on it wearing off. We need to do something.”

“Yeah.” Isobel kissed her teeth. “And soon.”

“And then we need to figure out what to do about Alex Manes,” Max muttered, only to raise his eyebrows when Michael glared at him. “What?”

“We’re not _doing_ anything about it,” Michael snapped, head swinging around to look at Isobel. “Okay? He’s not gonna tell anyone.”

“Look, I get that you trust him,” Isobel said, narrowing her eyes. “But you get why we don’t, right?”

“That’s a problem for later,” Max said firmly. “We need to figure out how to fix this spell problem first. I can’t teach if I’m zoning out every few minutes. I can’t even drive right now.”

“Yeah.” Michael closed his eyes. “Okay. I’ll go and get some more wine from Maria, you guys stay here. I’ll be back soon as I can, and we’ll see what we can do.”


	4. Trinity

The spell was different the second time around. They put out offerings, as before, and drank wine and raised energy, as before, and found themselves in a strange desert, as before. But no additional figure appeared in the shape of Noah, Liz, or Alex (as Michael admitted it had been for him), and instead of bright sunlight, the desert sky was dark and full of stars.

It was Isobel who led the way, taking the hands of her brothers and starting to walk.

“Is this what we’re meant to do?” Max asked, looking at Michael, who shrugged.

“Worth a shot. It doesn’t feel wrong to me, anyway.”

“You’re both thinking about it too much,” Isobel said. “Just…do it. You’re the one who said we should trust our instincts,” she reminded Michael.

“I know.” 

So they walked, all three of them, as if they were children again. Time was nebulous anyway, but the land seemed to be moving under their feet faster than it should have, the distances they were crossing greater than should have been possible.

“It’s like we’re in a dream,” Isobel said, gazing up at the sky.

“We’re not awake,” Michael pointed out.

“Do you feel different?” Max asked.

Isobel and Michael both looked at him. “How?” Isobel frowned.

“Like…” Max lifted his hand and stared at it. “I don’t know. I feel different, somehow.”

“You look kinda different,” Michael said, squinting. “Like your shirt’s too big or something.”

Isobel blinked, then leaned closer. “It is too big!” Her eyes roved over him. “You’re smaller! And so’re you!” she exclaimed, turning to Michael. “In your shoulders!”

Michael looked down at himself, plucking at the front of his shirt with his free hand and looking down it. “What the _fuck_.”

“What?” Max pulled at the front of his own shirt on some half-realised instinct. Between them, Isobel stopped very suddenly, her eyes wide.

“I.” She took a shuddery little breath in. “Oh my God.” 

“I don’t have any chest hair!” Michael said, voice jumping up in pitch. “What the –”

“You’re both idiots,” Isobel said, collecting herself. She could deal with this, unbelievably freaky though it was. “We’re obviously just unaging, or something.”

“Unaging?!” Max squeaked, staring down at his own chest. His hand jumped to his chin and cheeks, and he was sure his stubble was patchier than it should have been.

“Come on.” Isobel yanked their hands again and started walking again. “No point stopping now.” 

“Stopping before our balls retract into our bodies might be nice,” Michael muttered, grimacing at the sound of his own voice. He hadn’t realised that it had been slightly higher when he’d been a teenager. His body was maybe sixteen or fifteen now, at his guess. “This is gross.”

“Tell me about it,” Isobel muttered. “My boobs are shrinking. Back into my body,” she added snidely. “Before you go whining that you’re the only one going through reverse puberty.”

“If this isn’t reversible,” Max started, and couldn’t even finish the thought. His mind was already racing to awful possibilities of them waking up as children outside his house. They wouldn’t be able to explain it – they’d have to run away. Three children, they’d have to go through growing up all over again, through the awful powerlessness of childhood all over again.

“It’ll be fine,” Michael whispered, and a deep swirl of feeling eddied from his mind into Isobel’s and Max’s. A desperate, furious need to make it be fine, no matter what.

An equally protective feeling flowed back from Max, and a differently-coloured, more savage one from Isobel. If Michael’s urge was to fix things, Max’s was to prevent anything from going wrong in the first place, and Isobel’s to defend them if something did happen.

The recognition of how well those things fit together dawned on them all at the same time, received with differing levels of acceptance. Michael, unsurprisingly, was the wariest. Isobel glared at him, a rush of impatience accompanying her look. “Don’t be so stupid. Oh my God!” She let go of their hands to cover her mouth. “My voice!”

Max burst out laughing, then covered his own mouth with a gasp. “Shit, _my_ voice!”

Michael started to speak, then tripped over his by now well overlong pants and sprawled face-first in the starlit sand. His wave of disgruntlement on top of that had Isobel and Max breaking into giggles which only got worse when Michael rolled onto his back and huffed in his newly childlike voice, “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”

Isobel actually had to sit down, she was laughing so hard. “You sound like a little boy!” she giggled, and laughed harder at the sound of her own voice. “I sound like a little girl!” She hadn’t realised her own voice had changed so much as she’d grown.

“How old do you think we are now?” Michael asked after a minute, once they’d all gotten their breath back.”

Max, in the process of untangling himself from his pants and trying to cinch his shirt around himself more securely, shrugged. “Maybe ten?”

“Oh!” Isobel sat up. “You cut yourself with Mom’s sewing scissors when you were nine! Do you still have that scar?”

Max checked. “No.”

“We must be younger than nine then.” Michael started copying Max, trying to adjust his clothes. Isobel shimmied out of everything but her shirt and unbuttoned it enough that the neck fit snugly under her arms, around her chest. She pulled the arms up and looped them behind her neck, tying them together. Little ripples from Max and Michael made her laugh again – they were impressed, a little jealous, and a little annoyed at how easily she’d made herself an outfit that worked on her.

“It’s weird how we’re not uncoordinated at all,” Michael murmured, examining his hands. “This should be weirder than it is, physically speaking.”

“Speak for yourself,” Max muttered, digging his toes into the sand. “I’m finding it pretty weird.” He also really hated how absurd he sounded, saying things like that in a child’s high voice.

“It’s like we’re in Bugsy Malone or something,” Isobel agreed. “Should we keep going?”

“What’re those instincts telling you?” Michael asked sardonically, and rolled his eyes when he felt both Max and Isobel thinking he sounded ridiculous. “Shut up.”

“We’re not saying anything,” Max grinned.

“Apparently you don’t need to.” Michael held his hand out, and Isobel took it, reaching out to grab Max as well. They started walking again without needing to agree on it out loud, barefoot in the soft, cool sand. Isobel felt weightless, like she could have walked all night. To Max, it felt a little like they were floating. Michael was focused, checking their surroundings constantly.

It hadn’t escaped his notice, for example, that there was no moon in the sky at all, and the stars formed no recognisable constellations. The desert stretched out to all horizons, only the line of their footsteps behind them giving any indication of a direction. There didn’t seem to be any plants or animals around either. It was as if they were on a different planet, the only living things moving across its surface.

They could feel when they were approaching the age they’d been found at. The desert seemed to grow darker, as if the stars were giving out less light, and the sand had less give to it. They could feel each other’s trepidation – Max especially was nervous, his memories of how scared he’d been when they’d been found newly fresh in his mind.

But Isobel and Michael both countered that with reassurance directed at him, little waves of it keeping him calm. Exactly as they had when they really were all children together, with no one else looking out for them but each other.

A strange not-sound began to emanate from somewhere around them. From the sand or the sky, or perhaps both, deep and steady like the ring of an inaudible bell they could only feel, not really hear. “It’s like vibrations,” Isobel whispered. Her hair was almost white, and her cheeks were chubby, eyes huge. Max and Michael could both understand why Ann Evans had wanted her immediately – she looked like she should have fluffy white wings.

“Quit that,” she said huffily, pushing prickly irritation at both of them. It made Michael giggle and squeeze her hand, glad that he wasn’t doing this on his own. It had been lonely, casting spells alone for so many years.

The darkness grew until they were walking almost sightlessly, slowing to a shuffle as the bell-like not-sound grew around them. “Here,” Max said, stopping completely. “Let’s stop. I don’t wanna go any further.”

“I don’t think we can,” Michael said, stretching out his free hand to feel the air in front of them. “I think we should try though. Just a couple more steps.”

“Don’t let go of me,” Isobel warned him, and looked worriedly at Max, not that they could really see each other anymore. “Ready, Max?”

A petulant, frightened part of him wanted to dig his heels in and refuse, but Max nodded and squared his shoulders. “Sure.” They could feel his fear, but they could feel his resolve too, so it wasn’t embarrassing.

They stepped forward, and hit a wall almost immediately. In the same way the sound wasn’t a sound, the wall was there but not. They couldn’t go any further, but there wasn’t anything there either. “Nothing to sense,” Michael murmured, putting his hand forward again as much as he could. “Nothing to see, nothing to touch.”

“It’s kinda like magnets,” Isobel said, and since she had no hands free, she stuck her leg out instead, bare foot wiggling fruitlessly. “Like when magnets can’t touch.”

Max shifted a little closer to her, then reached out his own hand too to see if he could feel anything. As he did, light blazed brightly from in front of them, so strong that they all shouted and stumbled back. 

When they blinked the tears from their eyes and managed to squint at the source, they saw that it was the symbol, Max’s symbol that he’d drawn over and over as a child. Their symbol. And each branch, they realised at the same time, corresponded to one of them. Michael’s was the cross, Max’s was the one with two circles, and Isobel’s was the one with one circle. 

“They mean something,” Michael said, frustrated. 

“We just need to touch them.” Isobel pulled them forward again, squinting against the brightness. “Don’t you think?”

“It needs to be smaller then.” Max felt calmer now it wasn’t so dark. He’d never liked the dark, but the symbol lit them up and made everything safer. He reached out and gestured, pulling the symbol down and reducing its size so they could reach their branches. It was nice, feeling Michael’s appreciation in particular – he so rarely got to feel smart around Michael.

“You’re smart in different ways,” Michael muttered, his baby face making it come out sulkier than it ever would have done in his adult body.

“Thanks, man.”

Isobel’s hands flexed around theirs. “I’ll have to let go of you to do this.”

“We’ll be okay.” Michael stepped closer to her and slid his hand gently from hers. “See? I gotta be on the other side to get to mine better anyway.” He went behind them both to stand on Max’s other side, and it was a little embarrassing this time that Max knew both of them could feel his little eddy of relief.

It just made them both press closer though, all of them raising their hands together to step forward and press them over their corresponding symbols.

The light blazed as their hands made contact, purple and blue and red and green and colours they couldn’t even see with their human vision. Bright and brighter, blazing through them, blasting like sand against stone. Power against a barrier that had been placed inside each of their heads. Power that had been waiting all these years for them to come together to this not-really-there place and release it.

Isobel remembered: a mother with hair as blonde as hers, a wide smile, a kind heart. Other children, none as gifted as her. Her mother – Louise, her name was Louise – holding her tight and going into her mind to soothe her when she cried. She cried a lot, because she couldn’t find Max, and she didn’t even know then who he was or what he was called, only that she was missing him and couldn’t find him.

Michael remembered: running barefoot like a wild creature across the skin of the earth, racing other children and winning, and being swung high into the arms of his own mother. Wise eyes, slow smile, clever hands. She knew all the answers, she was so smart, she always knew how to keep them safe. Safe from making mistakes. Safe from him.

Max remembered: a prison. Darkness, and an inability to move. Cuffs around his ankles. Chains. Suffocating darkness. Flashes of purple light and a man who scared him. Brief interludes with a woman who scared him, but who at least fed him and spoke to him. Slowly growing to love her. Always fearing the man, and the darkness, and the chains.

They jerked awake in their real bodies, so violently that Michael slammed backwards into the ground with a gasp and Isobel screamed out loud. Max hunched over and started to cry, and their connection to each other was still strong enough that both Michael and Isobel came to sandwich themselves either side of him immediately, hugging him between them and squeezing tight to reassure him that he wasn’t alone, and he would never, ever be alone like that ever again.

“Louise,” Isobel said, gasping it out as though she was afraid that if she waited too long, the memory would fade. “My mother’s name was Louise. God, Max – _our_ mother’s name was Louise.”

“I can’t remember mine,” Michael said, agonised. “I can’t remember her name. But I remember her face now. My mom, I had a mom.”

“Auntie Nora.” Isobel reached over to grip Michael’s arm. “Her name was Nora, Michael. They were sisters!”

Uncertainty washed across their connection, and Isobel knew Michael was thinking of their DNA tests, which had said he was a half-brother, not a cousin.

“Cults,” Max said hoarsely from between them “Lotta cults let men have multiple wives. That man was probably our father, all three of us.”

“I don’t remember his name,” Isobel said, subdued. “And I don’t remember him much either. I just remember our mom. And you, Michael. And a space where you should’ve been,” she added to Max, confused. 

“He kept me locked up.” Max didn’t understand why. Remembering what had happened didn’t mean they understood _why_ any of it had happened. 

“You were special,” Michael said. “I remember my mom saying so. I remember them – do you remember them taking us away?”

They did, though the memories were the least clear for Max, who’d still been disoriented and scared from being taken outside for the longest time he’d ever been allowed. They’d lived somewhere in a desert, probably either New Mexico or Texas, and Louise and Nora had stolen them away in the night. With adult hindsight, it had clearly been meticulously planned, but as children it had come out of nowhere.

Isobel remembered hiding under a blanket in the back seat of a car, or maybe a truck. Max remembered being held by Louise, her mind soothing his fear and nerves. Michael remembered a truck stop, and Louise staying with them while Nora went inside, emerging with a lot of money. They’d gotten into a different car and kept going, and kept going for what he thought had been a couple of days at least. 

None of them knew where they’d been going. But something had obviously gone wrong. Their mothers had stopped the car late at night and taken them out, taken off their clothes, and cast a spell together to wipe their own children’s memories of everything that had happened in their lives before that exact moment. 

“They left us,” Michael said, hurt raw in his voice. “They just left us.”

“Noah said the coven would come looking for us,” Max reminded him, wiping his face and sitting up a little bit. “They wouldn’t’ve done it unless they had to. To protect us.”

“What the hell was so bad that dumping us in the desert without even _clothes_ was acceptable?” Michael asked, still pained.

“Our dad,” Isobel said quietly. “Whoever he was, going back to him was obviously out of the question.” 

They all slumped a little, leaning into each other. “What’re we gonna do now?” Michael asked.

“Check the spell side-effects are over,” Isobel said at once. “Then deal with Alex Manes, and then Liz.”

“Liz?” Max lifted his head, blinking.

“Please, don’t pretend you don’t want her to know now Michael’s spilled the beans to someone.” Isobel bumped her head against his. “So we need to deal with that. And then, we can try and track down this cult. And train ourselves up in the meantime.” Her determination blazed through both of them, soothing Michael’s hurt and lifting Max’s spirits. 

“C’mon,” Max muttered, shifting to get to his feet. “Let’s go inside. Ground ourselves, or whatever.” He glanced at Michael, who smiled.

“Yeah, alright.” They would have a better chance of finding and rescuing their mothers the way they’d rescued them if they were stronger, after all. And working together, with full access to their powers and memories, they would surely be able to conquer anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a super fun universe to play in! I love adding magic to everything.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr!](https://myrmidryad.tumblr.com/)


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